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WORK TITLE: Forgiveness Is Really Strange
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1959
WEBSITE:
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1959; married; children: three.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Founder of the Forgiveness Project.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including the London Guardian, London Telegraph, and Hello.
SIDELIGHTS
Marina Cantacuzino is a writer and founder of the Forgiveness Project, an organization that collects stories from people who have forgiven those who wronged them. In an interview with Dennis Relojo, contributor to the PsychReg website, Cantacuzino explained that her ire over Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War was one of the things led her to become inspired to start the project. He stated: “My newly formed peace activism probably would have begun and ended on that protest march had it not been for one other thing that stirred me up and spurred me on. This was seeing the photograph of a terrified and traumatised twelve-year-old boy called Ali Abbas. Ali became a symbol of the random futility of this war after losing both his arms and almost his entire family in a U.S. missile attack on Baghdad in March 2003. I was appalled by the haunted look in Ali’s eyes. … I started trying to create a counter-narrative to the one of retribution and payback, and began collecting stories of forgiveness and reconciliation both from survivors of atrocity but also from former perpetrators who had transformed their aggression into a force for peace.”
In an interview with Christian Century writer, Am Frykholm, Cantacuzino stated: “I was fascinated by the notion that forgiveness might be a way of putting things right between conflicting individuals or groups, and I was interested in forgiveness as a pain management strategy, a means of self-healing and renewal. I became determined to collect stories that showed peaceful solutions to conflict, stories where victims had met their offenders, where people had forgiven the killer of a loved one, or where former perpetrators had transformed their aggression into a force for peace.” Cantacuzino told Julia Farrington, writer on the Ministry of Counterculture website: “I see the Forgiveness Project as a place of enquiry and discussion, changing ways of thinking and behaviour but in a subtle way—which makes it difficult to campaign, to promote it in that way.” Cantacuzino continued: “We are not trying to force anyone to do anything—the stories are all authentic and they show the journey; they show the rage and the pain, and that forgiveness isn’t a quick fix, that you can find yourself back hating and in pain all over again. They present new and different ideas of dealing with harm and hurt; they help people resolve what is going on for themselves. These narratives which we tell in all forms … impact so profoundly on people’s responses to revenge and retaliation and shifts perspectives towards making a more peaceful society.”
Till Break of Day and The Forgiveness Project
In Till Break of Day: Meeting the Challenge of HIV and AIDS at London Lighthouse, Cantacuzino recalls her time volunteering at the London Lighthouse and profiles workers there. Richard Davenport-Hines, critic in New Statesman & Society, suggested: “If her book is inward-looking and even a little exclusive to outsiders, this reflects the world she is describing. Her approach may be over-personalised, but she is reliable, fair and well-intentioned.” Davenport-Hines added: “Her descriptions of issues raised by Lighthouse’s work are sometimes disconnected, but she covers everything evenly and temperately.”
The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age includes stories Cantacuzino has collected through her organization. Anita Sethi, critic on the London Guardian Online, asserted: “This remarkable book deserves to be read and reread—it shows how to bear the unbearable by transforming corrosive resentment into empathy and compassion.” “This book is thought-provoking and profoundly moving—a truly excellent collection of essays,” remarked a writer on the Publishers Weekly website.
Forgiveness Is Really Strange
Cantacuzino and Masi Noor are the authors of Forgiveness Is Really Strange. The book discusses the nature of forgiveness and research on the topic, and it includes personal stories.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer offered a favorable assessment of Forgiveness Is Really Strange. The reviewer commented: “This meditative ode on grace has lasting resonance, and it’s packaged in a beautiful, small-format volume.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Christian Century, March 29, 2017, Amy Frykholm, “What Is Forgiveness?,” author interview, p. 10.
New Statesman & Society, May 21, 1993, Richard Davenport-Hines, review of Till Break of Day: Meeting the Challenge of HIV and AIDS at London Lighthouse, p. 35.
Publishers Weekly, February 26, 2018, review of Forgiveness Is Really Strange, p. 75.
ONLINE
Compassion Anthology, https://www.compassionanthology.com/ (September 11, 2018), article by author.
Forgiveness Project website, https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/ (September 11, 2018), author profile.
London Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (May 10, 2015), Anita Sethi, review of The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age.
Ministry of Counterculture, https://moc.media/ (September 11, 2018), Julia Farrington, author interview.
PsychReg, https://www.psychreg.org/ (September 24, 2016), Dennis Relojo, author interview.
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (September 11, 2018), review of The Forgiveness Project.
Y.S. Stephen, http://www.ysstephen.com/ (February 26, 2018), review of Forgiveness Is Really Strange.
Marina Cantacuzino
Founder
Marina is an award-winning journalist who has worked for most British mainstream publications including The Guardian, The Telegraph and Hello magazine. In 2003, in response to the invasion of Iraq, she embarked on a personal project collecting stories of people who had lived through trauma and injustice, and sought forgiveness rather than revenge. As a result Marina founded The Forgiveness Project and started speaking widely about forgiveness and restorative storytelling.
The Forgiveness Project
by Marina Cantacuzino
One evening back in 2002, local London TV reported the story of a 3-year-old girl who had died in a London hospital after being mistakenly given the wrong drugs. As the parents, lawyers, and hospital staff emerged from the coroner’s court, the interviewer thrust a microphone under the father’s nose and asked how he felt towards the doctor responsible for his daughter’s death.
I expected to hear bitter words of retaliation and litigation but instead the father said simply that he had crossed the room, hugged the tormented doctor, and told him "I forgive you." It was a particularly moving moment of television, not least because in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq this merciful and compassionate act was so at odds with the bellicose rhetoric of revenge and pay-back that for many months had been grabbing all the headlines. It was at that point I decided that as a journalist I had a voice, and with a friend and colleague who was a photographer, we began to collect stories from those who had experienced violence and atrocity but chose not to further the cycle of violence through retaliation. Over the course of a year I met with parents who had forgiven their children’s killers, victims who had come face-to-face with their offenders, perpetrators who had transformed their aggression into a force for peace.
The 26 stories became an exhibition which I called The F Word and which opened at a small gallery on London’s South Bank in January 2004. I called the exhibition The F Word because, in the course of meeting so many victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, I came to realize that forgiveness cuts public opinion down the middle like a guillotine because people are either inspired or affronted by it. I realized that forgiveness is not an easy concept, nor a soft option, nor the privilege of some superior spiritual wisdom. Rather it is a process, a discovery, an expedient measure, a difficult journey in the course of which one day you might forgive and the next day hate all over again. The stories demonstrated that to go on this journey of forgiveness was difficult, painful and costly, but also (and this was the part that interested me) almost always healing and transformative.
The huge success of this exhibition took me completely by surprise. Six thousand visitors came in less than two weeks; individuals and groups from all over the world wanted to use the stories for their own work in conflict resolution, and visitors left powerful messages in the feedback book asking what next? Many said it was the most important exhibition they had ever seen and one woman wrote, “Now I would like to be photographed next to the man who attacked me.” Even funders wrote offering money – almost unheard of! I was totally taken aback. I had not anticipated that exploring the subject of forgiveness through personal narratives would have such an impact or that being exposed to other people’s stories could stimulate visitors’ own personal inquiry. The exhibition had clearly tapped into a deep and underlying public belief that there were peaceful solutions to violence.
The popularity of the exhibition led to me founding The Forgiveness Project, a UK not-for-profit that sets out to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution can be used to impact positively on people’s lives through the personal narratives of both victims and perpetrators of crime and violence. Everything that we now do – our prison program, a website that receives 500 visitors a day, a developing educational resource - contains the real stories of real people at its heart. Personal narrative is our currency.
The stories I’ve collected over the years have shown me that forgiveness is a word that no one can agree on. Everyone has their own definition and most have decided on their particular conditions and limitations. The stories reveal that the act of forgiving allows people to turn a page, make peace with something they cannot change. Forgiveness is not about condoning or excusing but about embracing human frailty and fallibility and taking responsibility for a society we are a part of and may have helped create. It is more than moving on and letting go because it requires a degree of empathy and compassion. As author Stephen Cherry writes in Healing Agony: Reimagining Forgiveness, “Forgiveness is not something that is done but something that is discovered. The relevant discovery is that the offender is ‘human like myself’.”
Several victims of crime or violence have told me about how they feel their life has become inextricably linked to that of the perpetrator, and some like Kemal Pervanic, a victim of the notorious Omarska concentraion camp during the Bosnian War, have become convinced that given the right circumstances we are all capable of hurting others. He says: “People describe these people as monsters, born with a genetically inherent mutant gene. But I don’t believe that. I believe every human being is capable of killing.” Father Michael Lapsley, a priest who during the apartheid era had both hands blown off by a letter bomb sent by the South African security forces, also makes the point that, “All people are capable of being perpetrators or victims - and sometimes both.”
Jo Berry whose father, Sir Anthony Berry, was a British politician and a victim of an IRA bomb that killed 5 people at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984, has realized that it is not her place to forgive but her father’s. Rather her journey has been all about not blaming and not judging. “If I get stuck into blaming my life closes down, and I feel I’m part of a problem which keeps wars and terrorism going,” she says. “Sometimes when I’ve met with Pat I’ve had such a clear understanding of his life that there is nothing to forgive.” Jo features in ‘The F Word’ exhibition alongside Pat Magee, the man responsible for planting the bomb.
In October 2009, 25 years after the IRA Brighton bomb, The Forgiveness Project held an event in the UK Houses of Parliament to discuss peaceful responses to oppression. Pat Magee and Jo Berry were to speak. Aware that Magee’s presence in Parliament was likely to offend some people, I wrote in advance to all three leaders of the main political parties, as well as to those who had been most directly affected by the bombing. I wrote as a matter of courtesy, saying that I knew having Magee speak in the House of Commons would bring up difficult feelings, and I explained that The Forgiveness Project was a place of inquiry, that explored rather than propagated forgiveness.
I stressed, in particular to (Lord) Norman Tebbit, who had been badly injured in the blast and whose wife had been permanently paralyzed that his views about repentance being a condition of forgiveness were as valid as the views of any other victim. Repentance as a condition of forgiveness is non-negotiable for someone like Lord Tebbit, and he has publically declared on many occasions open hostility towards Magee for not having been sufficiently repentant or remorseful. I received a fierce letter back from Lord Tebbit, ending with the line: “Your project excuses, rewards, and encourages murder.”
What I would say in response to this and to those who hold the same view, is that certainly The Forgiveness Project humanizes violence but only in so much as it exposes the pain, the hurt and the legacy. We do not “excuse” murder. We seek to understand and explain why people harm other people, but never to justify. For victims there is often a strong need to face the enemy; seeing the human face makes that person seem less of a “monster” and the world therefore a less terrifying place. I’ve always thought Jo Berry put it extremely eloquently when she came to the realization that “if I had lived Pat’s life perhaps I could have made his choices.”
My own position on this is that remorse should be measured by how you live now rather than how sorry you say you are. Almost all the Palestinians I met in 2008 whilst collecting stories from Combatants for Peace (an organization made up of former Israeli military and Palestinian resistant fighters) did not denounce their violent past. They believed they had been fighting a just war, defending their communities at a time – during one or both intifadas – when there was no other viable choice. In the end it was only a weariness born out of witnessing the futility of the cycle of violence that made them lay down their weapons and seek peaceful solutions.
The message of someone like Letlapa Mphahlele is perhaps an easier one for the public to swallow. During the apartheid era Mphahlele, then Director of Operations of APLA, the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, was responsible for many attacks on whites. However, in post-apartheid South Africa, having met Ginn Fourie, the mother of one of his victims, Mphahlele no longer believes violence should have been met by violence. Explaining his old thinking he says, “I believed then that terror had to be answered with terror and I authorized high profile massacres on white civilians in the same way that the whites did on us. At the time it seemed the only valid response.” Now he has come to see it differently and he asks himself, “but where would it have ended? If my enem[ies] had been cannibals, would I have eaten white flesh? If my enem[ies] had raped black women, would I have raped white women?”
One of the key things I’ve learnt from the many people whose stories I have helped to collect and share is an understanding that we are not separate from those who harm us. American born Linda Biehl whose 26-year-old daughter Amy was beaten and stabbed to death in a black township near Cape Town now employs two of those convicted of Amy’s murder and who were later given amnesty through the Truth and Reconciliation process. Having visited the townships herself shortly after the murder, Linda had realized that “we all share basic human desires. It’s just the context that is different. I’ve even asked myself if I’d grown up in a township, could I have behaved in that way?”
And Rami Elhanan whose teenage daughter was killed by a suicide bombing in 1997 says, “When this happened to my daughter I had to ask myself whether I’d contributed in any way. The answer was that I had—my people had—for ruling, dominating and oppressing three and half million Palestinians for 35 years. It is a sin and you pay for sins.”
Even Marian Partingon whose sister Lucy was one of the victims of UK serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, says, “My work has been about connecting with Rosemary West’s humanity and refusing to go down the far easier and more predictable path of demonizing her.”
Some years back I stumbled across a quote by Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn which sums up for me the spirit and ethos of The Forgiveness Project. The words are from The Gulag Archipelago (an account of the Soviet prison system under Stalin) in which the Russian writer and dissident gives an explanation of why we prefer not to take responsibility for humanity’s most heinous acts. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Marina Cantacuzino is founder of The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity that uses storytelling as an instrument for exploring reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators. Marina also blogs for The Huffington Post on this topic.
QUOTED: "I see the Forgiveness Project as a place of enquiry and discussion, changing ways of thinking and behaviour but in a subtle way—which makes it difficult to campaign, to promote it in that way."
"We are not trying to force anyone to do anything – the stories are all authentic and they show the journey; they show the rage and the pain, and that forgiveness isn’t a quick fix, that you can find yourself back hating and in pain all over again. They present new and different ideas of dealing with harm and hurt; they help people resolve what is going on for themselves. These narratives which we tell in all forms ... impact so profoundly on people’s responses to revenge and retaliation and shifts perspectives towards making a more peaceful society."
Interview with Marina Cantacuzino – founder and director of The Forgiveness Project (theforgivenessproject.com).
Julia Farrington
Julia Farrington
Head of Campaigns at Belarus Free Theatre / Associate Arts Producer Index on Censorship
JF: Why did you start the Forgiveness Project
MC: My background is in journalism and Forgiveness Project was a response to the rhetoric of retaliation and revenge that was being spoken by politicians and in the media at the time when the Iraq invasion was imminent, very early 2003.
I felt compelled to collect the stories about forgiveness and reconciliation as a counter narrative. Originally it was for a magazine article. I collected stories and a photographer friend made portraits. I interviewed victims of atrocity, of political violence and abuse and collected stories of perpetrators too because I felt it was important to understand why people harmed others in order to try to prevent it happening and provide a key to understanding violence, especially with former violent extremists.. That then became an exhibition called the ‘F word’ – funded by Anita Roddick. I thought my life would go back to journalism after the exhibition, but nothing I had ever written about before grabbed the attention like these stories did; it was partly the timing, the narrative of hope in a very bleak time.
Then the subject didn’t leave me alone and a few months afterwards, I started the Forgiveness Project. 11 years later I am still working in the field of conflict resolution, restorative justice, story collecting, healing narratives, trying to put out new and different ideas about how to respond to pain, hurt and violence.
The early stories tended to be very extreme and strong, because I am a journalist and I wanted to grab people’s attention and probably shock people. 10 – 11 years down the line I am more interested in the smaller stories that impact all of us all the time. That is what will be my focus going forward, dealing with our own inner grievances and resentments, family fall-outs and relationship problems. If we can help people by modelling restorative approaches through personal stories then that is very valuable. These big stories do shine a light on our own inner grievances and often do give people a new perspective, but sometimes they are just too big.
JF: Has forgiveness been an issue for you in your own life?
MC: I haven’t got a big forgiveness story, definitely not. I think this is helpful because I have had to carry and hold a lot of trauma through running this organisation. There must be a reason why I am so interested, but I haven’t found it yet, other than I was a bit of peace maker from a young age. I don’t understand why people need to lock horns or banish people from their lives, why warring factions can’t talk to each other. Also I had a lot of bereavement in my early life – my brother and two cousins died of a genetic disease when they were young. That led me into journalism - I wanted to share stories with people who didn’t have a voice; and maybe I am quite comfortable around pain.
JF: Is forgiveness always the best way to overcome an injustice or move on from loss due to crime or atrocity?
MC: No. I would never say always to anything. There are cases where forgiveness is not helpful, or applicable. Those cases would, I think, be in the midst of an ongoing violent situation – warring siblings or what is happening right now in Syria when people are hell-bent on survival. I see forgiveness as part of the repairing process, maybe years down the line. It is very useful to heal broken relationships, hearts and communities. It is a personal thing, it is about human relationships. It is about responding to being personally hurt by someone else. You could say you have been personally hurt by an administration – but I think it becomes a senseless dialogue. Who are you forgiving? Who was responsible?
Having said that I think it is a choice and we should respect anyone who chooses to forgive. When Eva Kor chose to forgive the Nazis, people got quite angry about it, even though she was a survivor of Auschwitz and tortured as a child and so is a direct victim. She says "I forgive the Nazis, not because they deserve it, but because I deserve it." People got cross because they think she is speaking on their behalf. It is her method of healing.
Forgiveness can divide families; it can feel like a betrayal if you are forgiving someone who has harmed a family member, or killed them. It can be a very isolating position, it isn’t always about building relationships. It is about letting go of hatred and it makes people feel better and that is why they do it.
JF: Have you seen a pattern emerging from encounters between victims and perpetrators?
MC: A survivor or relative of a victim of crime should only ever meet the perpetrator once they [the latter] has taken responsibility for their action and is showing remorse. It takes a lot to get to this point. But once this is the case and the victim and perpetrator come together there is a humanising pattern.
Until they meet, the victim may see the perpetrator as a monster, frightening, “the other”, but that changes once they meet. Acknowledgement and accountability can be more healing than punishment for a victim. What they want to hear is “I did it” and to have that witnessed. Punishment can be helpful but it is not always possible. In Sierra Leone or Rwanda there were too many perpetrators and in the end many had to be released, despite receiving short sentences that seemed completely inadequate to the crime.
Research out of US on the restorative justice system showed that when a victim and perpetrator meet and you talk specifically about forgiveness as the desired outcome of the meeting, people feel unsafe. But if you create the right conditions for people to speak freely to each other then forgiveness can happen; in other words the less you talk about forgiveness the more likely it will occur. Mark Umbright, an academic at the university of Minnesota sees forgiveness as an energy and he describes how he has felt the energy of forgiveness more in a restorative justice meeting than in any church or faith community he has ever been into.
JF: Do you think of the Forgiveness Project as a campaigning organisation?
MC: Not really, no. We deal with advocacy and we try and change a narrative and reframe the debate about forgiveness, which is barnacled with aeons of piety. We try to take it out of the straight jacket of religion; to secularise and make it much less exclusive.
What would we be campaigning for? That people share their stories? To seek non-violent ways of dealing with harm? There are quite a few campaigning organisations in the US saying that forgiveness is the only way, and if you can’t forgive you will be depleted in some way. I think that’s dangerous because I hate the idea of making it an obligation. I see the Forgiveness Project as a place of enquiry and discussion, changing ways of thinking and behaviour but in a subtle way – which makes it difficult to campaign, to promote it in that way.
JF: But you have had impact on criminal justice system in this country through your work in prisons.
MC: It has definitely had impact on those who have been exposed to it and it is definitely part of the Restorative Justice policy and it helps change behaviour. The Forensic Psychological Services at Middlesex University have done a good evaluation of our work that shows that it is effective and has an impact. But I wouldn’t claim to have been able to change ministers’ minds. We are living in a very dangerous time with the criminal justice system being privatised and rehabilitation isn’t much of a focus, receiving very few resources.
Many of the storytellers have their own campaigning groups - youth justice, FGM, Israel/Palestine -and this is part of the forgiveness journey. People seem to need to put meaning back into their lives in order to heal and often this is by campaigning to prevent people suffering the same way they have. Meaning making doesn’t necessary align with forgiveness, because you don’t have to forgive in order to campaign and try and make the world a better place. It is a way of starting to function again, to feel part of society rather than remaining isolated and locked in the story of the past. Forgiveness is about unlocking which is why it is an energy – a kind of liberation. One survivor described it as the gift in the wound.
JF: What is the most rewarding part of your work?
MC: The impact of not only sharing stories, but enabling people to tell their stories and working with victims and perpetrators together using a very restorative model. In prisons our programme is delivered by both a victim of crime and an ex-offender - it could be a mother who has lost her child working with someone who has killed – (but not the same crime), it really inspires people to change their own lives. The constant feedback inspires me: someone wrote in the feedback book from the first exhibition “now I wish I could be photographed next to the man who attacked me”. I was amazed what an impact these simple stories have had; an email from a journalist in Somalia said that every evening on his programme at 6pm he reads a story out to try and build peace in his community; a fire station in Seattle saying “thank you for the stories we use them in our diversity work”; a doctor in Southampton University he uses the website to each his students medicine (I’d be intrigued to know how they use the stories).
We are not trying to force anyone to do anything – the stories are all authentic and they show the journey; they show the rage and the pain, and that forgiveness isn’t a quick fix, that you can find yourself back hating and in pain all over again. They present new and different ideas of dealing with harm and hurt; they help people resolve what is going on for themselves. These narratives which we tell in all forms - as films, online, live (which is always the best) - impact so profoundly on people’s responses to revenge and retaliation and shifts perspectives towards making a more peaceful society.
_______
The Forgiveness Project is the partner organisation for Belarus Free Theatre’s Staging a Revolution performance of Discover Love on Friday November 6th 2015. After the performance, Marina Cantacuzino and Irina Krasovskaya, whose story is told in the play, will lead a conversation with the audience about forgiveness.
QUOTED: "My newly formed peace activism probably would have begun and ended on that protest march had it not been for one other thing that stirred me up and spurred me on. This was seeing the photograph of a terrified and traumatised 12-year-old boy called Ali Abbas. Ali became a symbol of the random futility of this war after losing both his arms and almost his entire family in a US missile attack on Baghdad in March 2003. I was appalled by the haunted look in Ali’s eyes. ... I started trying to create a counter-narrative to the one of retribution and payback, and began collecting stories of forgiveness and reconciliation both from survivors of atrocity but also from former perpetrators who had transformed their aggression into a force for peace."
The Forgiveness Project: Interview with Marina Cantacuzino
Dennis Relojo 24 September 2016 0 Comment forgiveness, healing, reconciliation
The Forgiveness Project: Interview with Marina Cantacuzino
The Forgiveness Project is an award-winning, secular organisation that collects and shares real stories of forgiveness to build understanding, encourage reflection and enable people to reconcile with the pain and move forward from the trauma in their own lives.
I recently interviewed its founder, Marina Cantacuzino (You can follow her on Twitter @MCantacuzino) on what the project is all about. She has also authored a book, The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I’ve learned everything I know about forgiveness through the people who have shared their stories with me.[/perfectpullquote]
Maybe you can start out by telling us about yourself and about The Forgiveness Project.
After graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1982 I worked for nearly 20 years as a freelance journalist. I was the main breadwinner with a househusband and three children. It was a great career; I travelled widely, met amazing people and learned a lot. But by 2002 I was beginning to feel journalism was tired of me, or I was tired of journalism. Editors were increasingly asking for stupid and salacious details about the people I interviewed which made me feel more and more uncomfortable. I was also struggling to get the work that had previously come so easily.
Then something happened to change the course of my life. I created an exhibit called The F Word: Stories of Forgiveness which in turn led to me founding The Forgiveness Project, an organisation that collects, curates and shares real stories of transformation in order to help others transform the pain and conflict in their own lives.
At the heart of everything we do is storytelling. My intention has always been to present healing narratives and facilitate restorative storytelling in the hope that it will allow people to reconcile with trauma, offer hope for a better future, and explore peaceful solutions to violence. The many stories I’ve collected not only represent a model for repairing broken communities or releasing toxic relationships but also shed light on our own smaller grievances by building empathy and providing fresh perspectives on difficult situations.
What was the impetus for creating The Forgiveness Project?
In a way I have Tony Blair to thank for propelling me along this path. In February 2003 I went on the “Stop the War” march in London’s Hyde Park where nearly 2 million people tried to convince our then Prime Minister that invading Iraq was not something that the British people wanted. “Not in our name!” screamed the placards and yelled the protesters. I felt a level of frustration and fury that I’d never felt about any political situation before, convinced that attempting to bomb Iraq into a democracy and removing its dictator from power would almost certainly make matters worse. Tony Blair heard the public outcry but he did not listen. From that moment on, as a journalist, I felt compelled to create a counter-narrative to the one of payback and retaliation more vividly and more forcefully.
My newly formed peace activism probably would have begun and ended on that protest march had it not been for one other thing that stirred me up and spurred me on. This was seeing the photograph of a terrified and traumatised 12-year-old boy called Ali Abbas. Ali became a symbol of the random futility of this war after losing both his arms and almost his entire family in a US missile attack on Baghdad in March 2003. I was appalled by the haunted look in Ali’s eyes as he stared out from the front page of almost every newspaper the day after the attack and as a result I started trying to create a counter-narrative to the one of retribution and payback, and began collecting stories of forgiveness and reconciliation both from survivors of atrocity but also from former perpetrators who had transformed their aggression into a force for peace.
What is your ultimate goal with this Project?
We are a small UK-based charity with 4 members of staff but a very wide reach. 500+ people come to The Forgiveness Project website every day from all over the world; 70,000 people have visited The F Word exhibition which has been seen in 17 different countries. Our intensive group-based prison programme RESTORE (which is modelled on restorative approaches) has been delivered to 3,000 participants. And our many lectures and events are always booked out. Every day we receive emails, letters, phone calls from people wanting to share their stories or asking advice about how to (whether to?) forgive someone who has harmed them. We are always working at capacity with limited resources. My hope and vision is to create Forgiveness Project chapters over the world; small hubs of story-collecting and sharing which will help to make the world a more tolerant and forgiving place
Are there any stories that strike a special chord with you?
So many. I’ve learned everything I know about forgiveness through the people who have shared their stories with me. But I particularly like the stories of restorative justice where former perpetrators have created a positive bond with their victims. Take the story of Mathew Boger and Timothy Zaal for instance. When Matthew Boger was 14 he was brutally beaten up by a group of skinheads, simply for being gay. It was a devastating attack not least because a year earlier Mathew had been thrown out of the family home by his mother who feared his sexuality would corrupt his siblings.
By a strange set of circumstances, three decades later he accidentally came face-to-face with Timothy Zaal, who he soon discovered had been part of the skinhead gang that night, in fact the person who had kicked his scull in the hardest. Nowadays both men share their story of forgiveness and reconciliation at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
The process of forgiveness didn’t come quickly for Matthew. But as a friendship developed between him and Timothy he realised that the only way to make sure the past would no longer dictate his life was to forgive Tim.
Forgiveness wasn’t easy and took a long time as Matthew had for so many years identified with the attack that took place when he was 14. He says “by letting that (victim) part of me go, I mourned the person I’d known for so long”. But he says that was also a very beautiful thing because what got replaced was a person who was more tolerant, more openhearted and a lot stronger.
Final thoughts…
When I founded The Forgiveness Project at the time of the Iraq war promoting discussion around the subject of healing and forgiveness felt very relevant. But today it feels even more relevant. We are living at a time where hate is effortlessly amplified through social media, where whole groups are demonised and dehumanised in a single moment, and the political rhetoric of the day is so often “If you’re not with us you’re against us”.
The reason why I think forgiveness of oneself, and of others, is so needed in our world today and the reason why it is so important to creating peace is I think best summed up in this heartfelt plea by the Jesuit, Richard Rohr, where he suggests we need to start with ourselves: “If we do not transform our pain we will most assuredly transmit it”.
Dennis Relojo is the founder of Psychreg and is also the Editor-in-Chief of Psychreg Journal of Psychology. Aside from PJP, he sits on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals, and is a Commissioning Editor for the International Society of Critical Health Psychology. A Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society, Dennis holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Hertfordshire. His research interest lies in the intersection of psychology and blogging. You can connect with him through Twitter @DennisRelojo and his website.
QUOTED: "I was fascinated by the notion that forgiveness might be a way of putting things right between conflicting individuals or groups, and I was interested in forgiveness as a pain management strategy, a means of self-healing and renewal. I became determined to collect stories that showed peaceful solutions to conflict, stories where victims had met their offenders, where people had forgiven the killer of a loved one, or where former perpetrators had transformed their aggression into a force for peace."
What is forgiveness?
Amy Frykholm
The Christian Century. 134.7 (Mar. 29, 2017): p10+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Full Text:
IN 2004 Marina Cantacuzino founded an organization called The Forgiveness Project. It began with an exhibit called The F Word, created with photographer Brian Moody, which joined photos and stories of reconciliation and forgiveness. The exhibit has been displayed in 14 countries. The Forgiveness Project runs a prison program in England and Wales called RESTORE. Cantacuzino is also the author of The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age.
How did you become interested in forgiveness?
It began with my anger at the Iraq war: anger at the rush to war; anger at the dominant narrative of retaliation; anger at the black-and-white thinking that says "if you're not with us, you are against us." I was fascinated by the notion that forgiveness might be a way of putting things right between conflicting individuals or groups, and I was interested in forgiveness as a pain management strategy, a means of self-healing and renewal. I became determined to collect stories that showed peaceful solutions to conflict, stories where victims had met their offenders, where people had forgiven the killer of a loved one, or where former perpetrators had transformed their aggression into a force for peace.
I thought about asking you to define forgiveness, but you make it clear in The Forgiveness Project that you resist defining the word. Why is that?
Forgiveness has multiple meanings, and people don't agree on the meaning. Even my own current working definition--"making peace with something/ someone you cannot change"--doesn't quite cut it, because forgiveness is more than acceptance or letting go. It has to include an element of compassion or empathy. As an organization, The Forgiveness Project is well served to be unspecific about the meaning. I have had people insist that forgiveness must be unconditional and therefore an act of self-healing. I've also had people insist the exact opposite, that forgiveness is entirely dependent on remorse and apology, and that therefore it has to be earned and deserved.
You also resist calling forgiveness "good."
When I first started collecting stories for the F Word exhibition in 2003,1 imagined forgiveness as a place where everything was transformed and healed. Along the way, however, I met Alistair Little, a former Protestant paramilitary soldier from Northern Ireland who had killed a man from the opposing side and served many years in prison for his crime. He told me categorically that he did not want to be involved in anything that pushed forgiveness as the only way or best way to heal. He said, "Some people can't forgive. But that doesn't mean they're weak, or that they'll be consumed by bitterness or anger. I've met people who haven't been able to forgive, but who haven't allowed the event to paralyze them. As human beings they've been hurt beyond repair. Who are we to say they should forgive?"
The word should affected me. I thought to myself, I never want people to feel they have failed if they cannot forgive. I agree with the late Marshall Rosenberg, founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, who believed should was one of the most violent words in the English language. In the wrong hands, forgiveness can become a kind of tyranny.
So you advocate a path of forgiveness, even while recognizing its limitations and potential divisiveness?
I don't advocate a path of forgiveness so much as an openness and a willingness to explore it--and then accept or reject it. I think people often don't want to think about forgiving someone or themselves, or about asking for forgiveness, because they have so many misconceptions about what it means. The Forgiveness Project is fundamentally a place of inquiry. We tell other people's stories. Some of them will be strong advocates of forgiveness, while others will focus on the limitations.
What do you mean by the need to free forgiveness from "the straitjacket of religion"?
I mean that sometimes forgiveness is barnacled by eons of piety. There is this perception that you need to be morally or spiritually superior in order to forgive.
How else is the concept of forgiveness misused?
I find it dangerous to be too prescriptive about forgiveness. For instance, I read an opinion piece in which the author said the physical effects of being unable to forgive can lead to cancer. There is plenty of evidence to show that forgiveness is good for your health and may even extend your life span, but there is no causal link between non-forgiveness and cancer.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu draws a distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. He advises us either to renew or release a relationship that is harming us. In other words, forgiveness does not mean reconciliation.
I am also concerned about forgiveness being promoted as a quick fix. Rowan Williams said: "I think the 20th century saw such a level of atrocity that it has focused our minds very, very hard on the dangers of forgiving too easily ... because if forgiveness is easy, it is as if the suffering doesn't really matter."
What do you aim to accomplish through the prison program RESTORE?
RESTORE is a three-day, intensive, group-based process involving both a victim or a survivor of crime and an ex-offender who by working together model a restorative process. Restorative justice is about humanizing crime. It views crime as injury rather than as lawbreaking, and justice as healing rather than as punishment. The leading restorative justice theorist, John Braithwaite, has written: "Because crime hurts, justice should heal." Pure restorative jus tice (the face-to-face meeting between an offender and the victim) can only happen when the offender accepts that he or she has committed an offense and is willing to show remorse.
The RESTORE program supports offenders in developing emotional resilience, demonstrating that everyone has the ability to change; and participants learn to create a new narrative from a basis of hope, responsibility, and a sense of agency.
How can we respond to the nationalistic mood evident around the globe and to the increase in hate crimes?
The only thing I know of--and the most powerful, and the quickest and the simplest response--is to share humanizing stories. This sharing of human stories creates what you might describe as a virtuous cycle and is therefore a powerful antidote to the vicious cycle of revenge and retaliation. As the poet Ben Okri wrote, "Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Frykholm, Amy. "What is forgiveness?" The Christian Century, 29 Mar. 2017, p. 10+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491091874/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dc2fbbb9. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491091874
QUOTED: "This meditative ode on grace has lasting resonance, and it's packaged in a beautiful, small-format volume."
Forgiveness Is Really Strange
Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p75.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Forgiveness Is Really Strange
Masi Noor, Marina Cantacuzino, and Sophie Standing. Singing Dragon, $14.95 (64p) ISBN 978-1-78592-124-7
To hurt and hurt others is to be human. How, then, does one recover and make amends? Noor, Cantacuzino, and Standing attempt to unravel this quandary in a charming graphic exploration of wrongdoing, redress, and recovery. Through illustrated testimonials, biographical examples, and excerpts of psychological research, they explore the limits and potential of forgiveness, its application at the individual and societal levels, and its biological effects upon the giver and receiver. Though Noor, Cantacuzino, and Standing endorse forgiveness as healthy and useful, they acknowledge its complicated aspects, such as the threat of insincerity and its potential use as a weapon. Standing's sunny colors embody optimism and anger as nimbly as her rough-edged lines capture frown lines and finely braided hair. The title is part of a series, including Anxiety Is Really Strange and Trauma Is Really Strange, which uses simple illustrations to unpack inherently complex concepts. This meditative ode on grace has lasting resonance, and it's packaged in a beautiful, small-format volume that feels like a gift. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Forgiveness Is Really Strange." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 75. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637461/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c71dfb00. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637461
QUOTED: "If her book is inward-looking and even a little exclusive to outsiders, this reflects the world she is describing. Her approach may be over-personalised, but she is reliable, fair and well-intentioned."
"Her descriptions of issues raised by Lighthouse's work are sometimes disconnected, but she covers everything evenly and temperately."
Till Break of Day: Meeting the Challenge of HIV and AIDS at London Lighthouse
Richard Davenport-Hines
New Statesman & Society. 6.253 (May 21, 1993): p35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1993 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
One of the sadnesses for people with Aids, or those close to them, is the way that the disease takes over their lives. The debilitating and scary progress of chronic illness looms larger and larger; the social identity of a person with Aids remains for the time being quite distinct from that of other terminally ill patients. It is more ruthlessly constructed by society at large; it is often and understandably reinforced by PWAs themselves; and it is further defined by the little specialised communities that try to support them: friends, lovers, volunteer and professional carers, and the histrionic ghouls who gather for the deathbeds.
These little communities are endlessly permutating and overlapping. They dissolve with a patient's death, only to be reconstituted after a few months with slightly different membership to start caring for another sick person. At one time or another everyone in such a community feels furiously and intensely that Aids is the most important thing happening in their world, and that everything else is a trivial and tedious distraction.
Marina Cantacuzino exemplifies all of this in her memoir of her time as a voluntary worker at London Lighthouse, the support centre and hospice for people touched by Aids. She shows friends, families, nurses, counsellors and volunteers in all their transient alliances. She shows too an Aids-centred mentality and an Aids-centred future. If her book is inward-looking and even a little exclusive to outsiders, this reflects the world she is describing.
Her approach may be over-personalised, but she is reliable, fair and well-intentioned. I have known several people whom she describes--some only identified by forenames--and feel grateful for her descriptions of those who have died. She is a little solemn about the Lighthouse's leading figures: no one would guess from her account that its founder, Christopher Spence, is a deliciously funny man with a nice line in self-deprecation.
Her descriptions of issues raised by Lighthouse's work are sometimes disconnected, but she covers everything evenly and temperately. Questions of confidentiality, models of counselling and caring, managerial tensions, building security, class discrimination, conflict between drug users and other HIV positive people, fund-raising and other concrete issues are all examined.
But this is supremely a book about human emotions. She describes young people dying before their time, often quoting them at length about their lives before their HIV diagnosis and since the onset of illness. Some of her stories are vilely bleak and disheartening, others genuinely and unsentimentally life-enhancing. One PWA recalls gay bars to her as "full of ... people being evil to each other", and not surprisingly some of the currents of bitchiness and competitiveness from that scene have affected the Lighthouse.
Animosities and disappointments are inevitable in such a world, but she does not distort or exaggerate them. Alongside the self-pity, quasi-religious soppiness, manipulativeness, cruelty and stupidity that can arise in Aids work, there is a great deal of love, generosity, bravery and wit. The Lighthouse, though neither its personnel nor ideas are infallible, is a marvellous institution that provides an innovatory and flexible model of health care. Her picture of its work is neither syrupy nor sensational, and evokes admiration and gratitude for its staff and supporters.
She explores the emotions of carers as well as people with HIV. Volunteers and professionals alike cannot take the strain and succumb to burn-out. They make mistakes and reproach themselves. Overall, Till Break Day is a study in emotional intensity rather than a textbook of hospice administration. The Lighthouse is a "raw and passionate world which was so much more substantial than the one which existed outside", Cantacuzino concludes. "Life was richer at London Lighthouse because life was rarer and therefore a great deal more precious."
Richard Davenport-Hines' next book will be "The Penguin Book of Vice"
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Davenport-Hines, Richard. "Till Break of Day: Meeting the Challenge of HIV and AIDS at London Lighthouse." New Statesman & Society, 21 May 1993, p. 35. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A13807904/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=85d26bc1. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A13807904
Review: Forgiveness Is Really Strange by Marina Cantacuzino, Masi Noor & Sophie Standing
February 26, 2018 - 0 Comments
Forgiveness Is Really Strange is a collection of thoughts on the nature of forgiveness and its role in human relationships. These diverse thoughts are sourced from people who have been hurt in the most grievous ways.
WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
Humans of all colour, creed, and cultures.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT
Reading this book is like watching a documentary. I love the diversity of interviewees and varied opinions. The variety makes the subject much broader.
MEMORABLE PASSAGE
.......
Forgiveness Is Really Strange by Marina Cantacuzino, Masi Noor, Sophie Standing (illustrations) is available to buy from on all major online bookstores. Many thanks to Singing Dragon (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) for review copy.
QUOTED: "This remarkable book deserves to be read and reread—it shows how to bear the unbearable by transforming corrosive resentment into empathy and compassion."
The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age by Marina Cantacuzino review – a call for reconciliation
Traumatised survivors and bereaved relatives forgive the perpetrators of their crimes, in this compelling collection of personal testimonies
Anita Sethi
@anitasethi
Sun 10 May 2015 04.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 20.14 EDT
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forgiveness project
‘Human affairs require resolution…’ The Forgiveness Project was inspired by a secular organisation of that name. Photograph: Alamy
What exactly is forgiveness? Is it possible to forgive somebody who has murdered your loved one, abused or once kidnapped you, and move on? How can we break the toxic cycle of revenge and seek new narratives? Collected in this timely, immensely moving book, which has thought-provoking forewords from Alexander McCall Smith and Desmond Tutu, are powerful stories from survivors who have eschewed vengeance in favour of forgiveness, laid side-by-side with narratives from the perpetrators.
It was growing global conflict, together with hearing a news story about a father forgiving a doctor who had accidentally administered a lethal drug to his three-year-old daughter, that led to Marina Cantacuzino founding the Forgiveness Project, a secular organisation exploring reconciliation and restorative justice through the personal narratives of those who have “used their agony as a spur for positive change”.
“Human affairs require resolution, I think, in much the same way that music does. There is a deep human need for it, just as the ear anticipates and yearns for musical resolution,” writes Alexander McCall Smith. Here are lifetimes of pain, courage and resolution from around the world, including the UK, Norway, Poland, Palestine, Bosnia, Rwanda, Indonesia, Senegal, Egypt, Australia and the US. From a survivor of the 2005 London suicide bombings to the mother who met and forgave the person who stabbed her teenage son to death, these are harrowing accounts.
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“You can’t stay around in the fog. You need to soar, to go higher. That’s forgiveness,” writes Wilma Derksen, whose 13-year-old daughter was murdered. “For me, forgiving has been about turning what has happened to us into good.”
This remarkable book deserves to be read and reread – it shows how to bear the unbearable by transforming corrosive resentment into empathy and compassion.
The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age by Marina Cantacuzino (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, £16.99). To order a copy for £13.59, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
QUOTED: "This book is thought-provoking and profoundly moving—a truly excellent collection of essays."
The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age
Marina Cantacuzino. Jessica Kingsley (jkp.com), $25 (208p) ISBN 978-1-84905-566-6
For a decade, Cantacuzino's non-profit organization, the Forgiveness Project, has been devoted to eliciting personal narratives about forgiveness and reconciliation from people all over the world. This inspiring and heartbreaking collection reminds readers of the variety of tragedies that exist in the world, but also of the indomitable power of the human spirit. Whether it is the tale of a woman forgiving her father's killer, a white supremacist coming to terms with the damage he has done, or an Aboriginal man pondering the Australian government's policy of forcible child adoptions, readers will be absolutely immersed in these narratives. Throughout, Cantacuzino is careful to manage reader expectations about what forgiveness and reconciliation look like. She explains that this process never happens in quite the same way, and that it is never easy. What forgiveness does require is a staggering display of empathy, to a degree that may force readers to question deeply held assumptions. Cantacuzino also reminds readers that even aggressors have people who love them and that those who commit atrocities are still human beings. This book is thought-provoking and profoundly moving—a truly excellent collection of essays. (Apr.)